# 14

Robert D. Wilson's

Over 3 decades of poetry and haiga art

skipping stones

     across an afterbirth . . .

twilight dawn

somewhere else,

hoping something

will change

in the winter,

night became day

*election day 2008

a long day . . . 

the sad song of

caged pigeons

does the

river remember . . . 

when she

ventured through town

in a see-through dress

bored vendors

eye every move . . .

fruit flies

i cried

this morning, like

a child on

christmas getting

what he wanted

*Obama's victory speech

at night, 

i try not to think . . . 

tall reeds

without dreams,

i slink into

a death wish

painting blank thoughts

with hopelessness

families 

tending echoes . . .

typhoon!

like always

i retreat to

my room

sowing dreams in

darkened harbors

he sits on a

carabao pondering

next year's winter

your eyes

visit me at night . . . 

wondering

why i left you

to stare up at the stars

* for Bobster

a typhoon,

your anger, tearing

off blossoms

*for EJ

you can't have

me yet, dragon . . .

your talons 

are mired in the

mind of another

      sleepless night . . .

listening to the

keys of glass

one day, the

mirror you avoid

will pull you

into a hell 

you can never leave

i translate

what tree tells me . . .

late morning

i listen

to trees, the voice

of water,

the song of wind,

the chatter of wrens

i avoid

the glow of stars . . . 

winter heat

a toddler

throws up on her

mother's blouse

in a bus driven

like a roller coaster

run if you

want, into the summer 

. . . i never left

      what is hope . . . 

the dreams of naked

children 

playing in puddles

after sundown

where's the

father of the 

unwed girl . . .

begging for pesos 

to buy a dream or two

      between lines . . . 

a cigarette vendor

shucking winter

what' wrong with

an unwed mother

asking white

men twice her age

to walk through rainbows

     autumn's end . . . 

a beggar avoids

my eyes

like a

rabbit she jumps 

back into

the magician's hat

while i'm sleeping

always friday . . .

she left me for the shadow 

i couldn't find

this shadow,

the cloud hanging

over me . . .

a talon pulling

me through hell

i lean in

       to you, typhoon . . . 

reveilie!

      christmas lights . . .

i enter the night

i've hidden

year after year in

a semen stained room

     mute winter . . . 

empty faces too 

busy to care

shade me if

you want a truth winter

cannot hide . . .

your neon smile

blinks on and off

in the

jungle where I 

camped, the

silence continues

to include me

    mute night . . . 

what aren't you

telling me?

to those in 

a hurry to go

nowhere . . . 

a koi swimming

slowly through lilies

   christmas time . . . 

a bargirl stares at her 

baby's photo

when i pass

away, my bleached

white bones

will be wrapped in

fortune cookies

short night . .. 

every day i wake

up at noon

when i die

my ashes will 

remind you

of long john silver

walking the gang plank

    jack fruit moon . . . 

our drunken neighbors

sing out of tune

fragments of

thought, enough to

push the

clouds away, your

face in a coffee cup 

tu fu . . .

introduce me to

your cricket!

somewhere, a

mole pushing spring into

. . . rabbit holes

it's dark in here, and moist, the wind rushing past me and a thousands others . . .

 falling down, who knows what, a rabbit hole it looks like, but that was once upon a time, or so it seems, time passing like a thief in the night . . . dreams, thoughts, a hodgepodge of this and that, collectively . . . look there's Dorothy with Toto,

leaving Kansas, leaving us, leaving the dreams we dreamt as children, or maybe I'm a mad man, a figment of Dali's fertile imagination, a yellow post it note from the king of artistic madmen . . . falling, falling, darkness, DARKNESS . . . listening to music no one remembers or listens to, the world, a parachute jump into a bowl of miso soup substituted for a Campbell's creme of mushroom soup with low sodium.

Haibun From

robert d. wilson's

Vietnam Ruminations

End of Tet -

the marks on her back, a letter

Iʼd rather not read

At the conclusion of the Tet Offensive in 1968, a girl who worked as

a laundrywoman on our base returned after a three week absence. Her

back was covered with hideous burns. Her family had been tortured

and murdered. It was a reprisal by the Viet Cong for her working on

our base. She, of course, was an innocent. She worked for us to help

support her economically strapped family. Her alliance was to her

family, not to a political belief.  Like many living in the rural provinces

of Vietnam, she wanted to live a simple life free from anotherʼs

tyranny.

Fireflies

on the waterʼs surface -

a house of mirrors

Standing guard in the wee hours of the morning on the bow of

the repair boat barge I was stationed on, was eerie, to say the

least. You could never relax. Stories were told in the chow hall of

Viet Cong frogmen who traveled across the small bay we were

moored in, using hollow bamboo reeds to breathe through. Like

ghosts, they appeared when a soldierʼs guard was down. The only

sound during this watch was the faint lapping of waves against

the bargeʼs hull and the steady thump thump thump of my heart.

In the distance, gunships sprayed the horizon with machine gun

shells laced with tracers that lit up the sky. More than once, I saw

my refl ection in the water. At that time of the morning, at nineteen

years of age, a variety of thoughts and questions danced in and out

of my mind; some deeply introspective.

Saffron robed monks

sweep me through the temple -

this humid morning

I asked a Vietnamese woman who worked on our base if she could

arrange a visit for me to the local Buddhist temple. She smiled and

told me she would talk to one of the monks. She returned the next day

and told me the monk said it would be dangerous for me to visit the

temple. What the monk meant by that I will never know. I told her

to tell the monk that I wanted to visit the temple anyway; that I was

interested in the Buddhist religion and wanted to learn more. She related

that to the monk who reluctantly agreed to give me a quick tour

of the temple. He had a nervous look on his face when he brought me

inside. It was a dimly lit temple, the light emanating from fl ickering

candles and burning joss sticks. At the altar were three giant golden

Buddhas. The Buddha of the past. The Buddha of the present. The

Buddha of the future. It was an otherworldly sight. The monk gave

me a joss stick and taught me how to bow and pray to the three Buddhas.

in her wake -

a thousand bad movies

sheʼd never see

I am haunted by a photo I took in Saigon during the Vietnam War.

A woman is walking down a dusty highway on her way to work or

school. Behind her is a pillar of smoke. She didnʼt look back. What

was past, was past. Only the future offered hope. Many movies have

been made about the war. Most are cheap and exploitative. Their purpose?

To fi ll cash registers with dollar bills. Most people are clueless

as to what the Vietnamese people experienced, let alone the soldiers

who fought the war. War is not glorious.

PERFORMANCE POETRY

The following tanka and the free verse performance 

poem below is in response to the nuclear reactor

leaks in Japan caused by the Tsunami and 9.0

earthquake:

      plastic spring . . .
rat poison falls
earthward
into the mouths
of hungry blossoms

FAT CATS

fat cats,
dancing
under
crystal chandeliers 
to the
Beatles song,
Money.
$20,000 gowns,
black ties,
rich girls
in pig tails,
unaware
unconcerned,
mastercard
their yayas . . .
gojira
underwater
chuckling
glad that men
are fools,
listening to
the greasy palm brothers . . .
saints 
on
the evening news
shedding tears
promising
to save us all
except
the only thing
they save
is money . . .
our comfort,
an insurance policy
we can't afford
to buy

robert d. wilson
©2011

time

for the elephant

to be sent back

to the jungle 

It was stolen 

from

by the same

big bad rich

cats who

USE them 

for their logo

and belt buckles

not 

giving a damn

that they'll be extinct

As in NADA

in the next decade

As if 

the elephant miesters

cared, 

their wallets busting

their hired hands busting

their sweat shops busting

the poor everywhere

busting butts

for the rich 

who forget

that one day

the USED

will fight back

with a stampede 

of 

NOW!

robert d. wilson

©2011

That's all for this week. Keep the people in

Japan in your prayers and/or thoughts.